


corpse blossom

by broccolee_7



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Magical Realism, Road Trips, Talking About Life, and other things, houseplants, vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28876560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broccolee_7/pseuds/broccolee_7
Summary: It's a quiet Thursday morning, and there are autumn leaves falling straight from a spring sky and onto the shiny new earth crawling out of its winter shell. They drift to the ground like wasted moments, and Mark would be afraid if Donghyuck wasn't showing him how to collect each one and cherish it.or, one day autumn leaves start falling even though it isn't autumn. Mark and Donghyuck talk a little bit about a lot of things because Donghyuck has a clearer mind than anyone Mark's ever met and Mark wants nothing more than to drown in the beauty of his world.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	corpse blossom

**Author's Note:**

> for my grandpa, who taught me to quietly wonder at the spirit in the world around me and whatever lies beyond it. i love you, and i thank you for everything ❤

Spring is just setting in for good when the leaves start falling. It’s been a long winter, this year, the kind that receded for a few days to trick the flowers into blooming early only to return with bitter cold force, ice on fragile blossoms and cruel sunshine on frosted blacktop. 

Mark loves winter, loves the snow and the teeth in the chill and the haunting beauty of the bare earth, but he’s glad to see it go. The snow melts into sparkling streams, the ice drips into muddy puddles, and the sun breathes heavy on the damp horizon. It’s a bit like redemption, the way the brilliant emerald of fresh life pierces the mud of winter’s death. The way the soil curves to ferry out the melting snow, the way the ground eats up the moisture to feed its new children.

Mark steps into his rain boots on Sunday, because they were also his snow boots, and takes a walk. He leaves his jacket at home, and the air clumps against his skin, clammy and wet and magnificently alive. It clots in his nose as he breathes it in, almost _too_ rich, so saturated with life that he can’t get any oxygen out of it.

The blacktop is unyielding against the soles of his boots, and dark with bleeding snowbanks. They’re gray instead of white now, regal purity disintegrating under splotches of dirt and patches of grass torn up in the sharp edges of shovels and snow plows. Mark stomps through one, just to hear it crunch under his feet, to see his footprint stamped into it.

When he gets home, the apartment smells stale and the air is too thin. It’s empty, because Donghyuck always works Sunday mornings, but Mark feels less alone than he had on the spring giddy sidewalks of their drowsy city. All of Donghyuck’s houseplants are shuffled around from their usual positions, something about Gerald being sensitive to spring sunlight and Martin looking droopy. They all look sort of droopy, but Donghyuck says that’s normal in the winter, because they somehow know that winter is a time for sustaining rather than growing. 

Mark would never put a finger on them, but he likes having them around. His mother bought him a cactus a few years back, the kind with a little red top, and he’d somehow managed to kill even that. Donghyuck reassured him that those never live longer than a few years, because the red part and the cactus part are actually different plants that have a parasitic relationship and it’s doomed to fail. 

So Mark doesn’t even try watering them, or turning them, or scraping up their soil like Donghyuck sometimes does. He pulls out his laptop and sits at the tottering table in the corner of their kitchen slash living room slash coat closet. There’s another plant at the table, with heart shaped leaves that spill over the edge of the pot. Mark thinks it’s name is John, but the one right on the eastern windowsill also looks like a John, so he’s not too sure. It’s good company, regardless.

When Mark gets home on Wednesday afternoon, Donghyuck is sitting cross legged on the floor of their bathroom, staring up at the tiny skylight. Mark mirrors his position, but the ugly pale green tiles cut into his ankles so he shifts to pull his knees against his chest, wraps his cold hands around his shins. He leans back into the side of the bathtub, and follows Donghyuck’s eyes.

“Something’s different,” Donghyuck says. 

And Mark doesn’t really see anything different about their narrow window to the sky, but Donghyuck’s always noticed things like that. Little brown spots on green leaves, tiny sprouts of life fighting through the shell of an acorn, whispers in cemeteries and the smell of a storm on the wind.

They sleep with the window open that night, and Mark drifts under in the gentleness of the air but he knows Donghyuck stays awake. He’s on his back next to Mark, hands crossed over his stomach, arms bare to the rich air wafting through the square mesh of the screen. Mark keeps the blankets pulled up to his chin, because he likes feeling covered, even in the edge of heat in the humid breeze. 

He dreams of crumbling gravestones and thick vines swelling to fill the cracks, of the earth itself splitting open and swallowing him up, his skin yellowing and freckled with brown spots. He dreams of staring up at black skylights and pouring boiling hot coffee over the fragments of a broken mug. He dreams of doors that open into mirrors, of nights that bleed into sunsets that bleed into yesterdays that bleed into stale sunrises and dreams he’s already had.

When Mark wakes in the morning, it’s to Donghyuck shaking him, blankets rumpled and every window in their apartment thrown open. Donghyuck is silent as he eases Mark out of bed, and Mark catches an odd rustling sound, a hollow breeze that should be fleeting but endures. 

“Look,” Donghyuck whispers when they’re at the window. “I think they’ve been falling all night.”

And Mark doesn’t really get it at first, because it’s just leaves, falling from the trees like they do every autumn. Except it’s not autumn, and all the trees have been bare and spindly all winter, only just sprouting their tiny gems of new life. Mark leans out the window with an awed sort of urgency, and Donghyuck drapes himself over Mark’s back looking a breath away from laughter.

The leaves rain from a sky that’s bluer than hyacinths, brittle husks of pale orange and washed out yellow and flat brown, bobbing and twirling in the foreign air. They fall from somewhere above the clouds, somewhere that Mark can’t see even when he sticks his head out the window and cranes his neck to look up. A blade of nausea curls in his gut, because the scene is impossible, and he jerks his head back inside.

Mark has to swallow. He’s a bit uneasy even back in the familiarity of the apartment, where the walls are solid and their dresser is covered with knick-knacks like it always is. Donghyuck catches his eye, and grins. Mark wonders if he’s unafraid because he saw this coming, or because he understands it, or just because he’s Donghyuck, and he bathes in awe instead of fear like it’s a choice. 

“What do you think’s going on?” Mark asks.

Donghyuck shrugs. It does nothing to dim the sheen of excitement riding his skin.

He pulls Mark into the living room by his wrist, smile as sharp and clever as a fairy’s. They fall onto the couch together. The cushions are worn and soft with age, the middle of the frame sagging, and they sink into it in a tangle of limbs. They pull their legs up to sit sideways, and Mark ends up wedged in the corner so that they can stretch out side by side and face the window. 

For a while they just watch the leaves fall, because the sky is so clear that it’s captivating and each husk dancing on the wind is as fascinating as a memory. Mark could probably lay there all day, squeezed between Donghyuck and the couch cushions, toes digging into the space between the pillows, watching this ghost of autumn settle over the budding spring.

But he has work later, and he thinks Donghyuck might too, so he wriggles and groans until Donghyuck takes notice and lifts his legs up to his chest so that Mark can slither out from beside him. Mark gets whacked in the face with wiggling toes, and tumbles onto the hardwood floors, and Donghyuck just laughs as heavy spring air rides through the window on a crisp autumn breeze.

Donghyuck’s eyes stick on Mark as he hauls himself to his feet. Once he has the whole couch to himself, Donghyuck sprawls out further, molding the back of his neck to the headrest so that his head tips back and his forehead brushes the leaves of whatever plant is on the end table.

The tiles in the kitchen are cold under Mark’s bare feet as he surveys the cabinets for a while. Donghyuck is the cook between the two of them, but Mark knows he slips through his own fingers sometimes. To Mark, Donghyuck is something a little more than human, but also something a little less, like he’s not used to having a body bound by natural laws in a world limited by the space pressing in around it. 

So Mark finds some english muffins, rips them apart over the sink because he likes the way it makes all the nooks and crannies for the butter to settle into. When he uses a knife to slice them, they get too flat, and the butter slides right off. It’s an old package, and one of the muffins has a spot of mold on one side. Mark digs it out with blunt nails and throws it out.

When he takes that one out of the toaster it’s got a whole chunk missing, gouged like the mold took a bite out of it. Donghyuck raises an eyebrow at it when Mark brings over the plate, but he takes that one first. 

Mark walks home with the sunset, the filmy haze of dusk settling around him. The leaves are still falling, sometimes alone and sometimes in little flurries. They’re piling up on the edges of the roads, on the sidewalks, on the strips of people’s yards. It’s a strange sight when all of the trees have fresh green foliage, and the piles of auburn leaves lounge beneath dappled sunlight that never quite makes it to autumn. Everyone Mark passes is a bit wide-eyed, a bit hurried, a bit haunted. 

He didn’t get many customers that day, but the few who had stopped in were eager to speculate. Some dove into conspiracies, talk of science and politics that seemed too shallow for the whirls of autumn fluttering down to earth. Others shrugged off the reason and told Mark what they thought the future bore with wide eyes and low voices, looking over their shoulders and gesturing with the frantic movements of an insect. 

One woman said that heaven was wilting, lush gardens withering and drifting to the earth beneath them. That’s what Mark thinks of as he walks, dragging his feet through dead leaves like they’re puddles. He imagines a wasteland above the sky, wonders if there is another one beneath the ground. Because the heavens are less of a location and more of an After, and ‘after’ is a relative word. Everything can become after, so long as something is placed before it. 

Mark stops in front of his building with a chill on his skin and each beat of his heart echoed by fear. The half-flight of stairs leading to the front door is covered in leaves, a collage of faded leather and bruised peach skin, rotting lemon peels and burnt desert sand. All of it crunches under his boots as he climbs up, each step careful because he can’t make out the lines of stone through autumn’s brittle blanket. 

The door’s really old, because this city’s really old, and Mark has to wiggle it until the latch catches just right. The reflection in the thick glass of the too tall wooden doors captures the breeze ruffling his collar, and softens the sky of falling leaves to a blur of beige and periwinkle. Some of them rush inside with Mark, bustling in around his feet to lay shivering in the corners of the entryway.

Mark tries to kick them back out, but a wave of wind drags even more inside, and they’re pooled around his ankles before he can slam the door shut. He hates the sound of them skittering against the cheap tiles as he rushes to the stairs, climbs the first flight fast enough that he’s short of breath.

Donghyuck isn’t in the apartment, but Mark instinctively identifies evidence of his presence: his shoes by the door, his wallet on the counter, the kitchen light glinting on chipped white countertops. He’s left the window open, and Mark scrambles to close it before he’s even toed off his shoes and hung up his jacket. Mark gathers up the leaves that have trickled inside and throws them into the waste bin.

He finds Donghyuck on the roof, looking like a dream against the unblemished sky and its amber rain. There’s soil spilling out onto the rooftop, and Donghyuck’s fingertips are almost black with it. He’s squatted down amongst plastic pots and plants laid down with their roots exposed, a grimy green watering can and hundreds and hundreds of leaves, some lying gently and some skittering in the air and some colliding with the cement in a dry whisper. 

Donghyuck grins up at Mark when the door slams shut behind him. There’s an old clay pot right in front of him, filled with black wet soil that matches his fingertips. He scoops up some of the leaves settled around him, and they scrape against the blacktop.

“How was work?” Donghyuck asks as Mark sits across from him, far back enough that he’s not in the way.

Mark shrugs. “Pretty quiet. Everyone’s confused about,” he stumbles on the words and gestures to the dry puddles surrounding them, “all of this, whatever it is.”

Donghyuck laughs. There must be some fear in Mark’s words though, because Donghyuck searches out his eyes and embraces his stare. He looks at Mark like he can see him, and Mark flushes at the weight of it because Lee Donghyuck doesn’t look at _people_ for very long. Lee Donghyuck is a creature of nature herself, a boy of open windows and always bare feet, with a smudge of soil on his skin and a spoonful of starlight in his eyes. 

He holds umbrellas upside down when it rains because he likes to collect the drops and see the clouds reflected in them, likes to carry them ever so carefully up to their apartment and fill his little green watering can with thousands of pieces of fallen sky. Mark just likes the way the rain presses Donghyuck’s hair into his head because it makes him look human, likes how the gentle streams of water on Donghyuck’s temples always pool in the curve of his smile.

“I’m sure it was just as odd when it rained for the first time,” Donghyuck says as he looks away, because he’s just as familiar with the burden of a stare as Mark is. “How strange, water falling from the sky.”

Mark’s chest bumps with a laugh. “It’s not like that, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck frowns, but there’s a whisper of a smile in his eyes that reminds Mark that Donghyuck’s heart is just as human as his own. “Yes it is. We’ve all seen leaves, and we’ve all seen water. Now they’re just coming from the sky.”

Mark shakes his head. He’s never met anyone quite like Donghyuck, and he’s not sure he ever will. Being with him feels like the lurch in your stomach when a plane takes off, or the bottomless pit that opens in your chest when you look up at the stars on a clear night. Donghyuck makes Mark feel like he’s falling, just like the leaves and the rain. Mark wonders if everything is made of falling, or made to fall, if time is a vertical abyss that a lifetime and everything else that is a slave to the passing of the seasons must plummet through.

“Why doesn’t anybody care when the sunshine falls down?” Donghyuck muses, peering at his own muddy fingers and rubbing the clumps of soil stuck on his skin. “Or when puddles disappear? And volcanoes! And glaciers and tectonic plates, and all that stuff that happened just right to make everything how it is now. But there’s nothing _scary_ about any of it. It just, happens, doesn’t it?”

Mark supposes he’s right, but there’s also an explanation and a reason for it all. Everything lined up on the sliver of a chance, but then it worked together to create all of the little things. Water evaporates instead of disappearing, the heat inside the earth warms the volcanoes into boiling, the glaciers melt and the plates shift on the mantle, and someone’s figured it all out.

He tells Donghyuck as much, because humans like knowing and no one knows why the leaves are falling. 

Donghyuck laughs again, gathers his brittle leaves. He responds that evaporation sounds a lot like magic, and that you can’t read love in a rapid heartbeat. 

Then he’s letting the leaves stacked on his palms fall into the pot of soil. He digs his fingers into them until they crumble, and he kneads at them until they’re mixed into the soil, flecks of autumn in seasonless earth. 

“What are you doing?” Mark asks.

Donghyuck’s brow is tensed under his focus. “Repotting William, and getting John into some soil. I think it’s time.”

“No, with the leaves.”

“Oh, they’re good fertilizer.” Donghyuck smiles down at his earthy stew, dusting off his hands. “They say the amount of nutrients in fallen leaves is equivalent to three quarters of all the nutrients a tree took in during the year. But I think they’re sort of like ghosts, or memories, maybe. They used to be alive, too, so they’ll be good company for the fresh roots. And these leaves came from the sky, so I’m sure they have cool stories.”

“I don’t think they’ll be able to say much all blended up like that,” Mark says after a moment, but his heartbeat’s a little faster and somehow Mark knows to call it love.

“Plants don’t say much at all, silly. They don’t have mouths.” Donghyuck shakes his head as if Mark is the one who isn’t making any sense. “They’re the story themselves, they give away all that they’ve got for new life, just like everything else does.”

Mark hums, even though he doesn’t really get it. He’ll think about it later, when Donghyuck dreams next to him and Mark’s brain sticks on everything Donghyuck’s said. It’s the only time that Mark has to catch up to Donghyuck, because the stillness and silence of his sleep means that he can’t give Mark anything new to think about. 

Even now, Mark is intrigued by the way Donghyuck distributes the soil between two pots, one big and plastic with a price tag and a bar code scratched off the side and the other small and made of clay. His fingers are gentle as a shadow as he picks up the first plant and tucks it into its new home, blanketing the roots in damp soil. Mark thinks this one is William, because it’s the one that Donghyuck checks on every single morning and Mark’s heard quite a lot about it. 

Donghyuck hands it to Mark when he’s finished.

“I hope this helps,” Donghyuck says with a frown. “He keeps wilting for some reason, see how a bunch of the leaves are yellow?”

Many of the leaves are indeed yellowing, and the ones that aren’t droop off the stem. It’s a beautiful plant, really, with vibrant red stalks and leaves painted with crimson veins. 

“Hopefully,” Mark responds. “Is this the one that you said wouldn’t make it? William, or something?”

Donghyuck brightens like he always does when Mark remembers something like that. It’s odd, because Donghyuck doesn’t seem to understand that Mark hangs on to his every word, and doesn’t respond simply because Donghyuck gives him so much to process, so much to wonder at that there’s no time to say something in return.

“Yeah, I didn’t know when I bought him but he needs a tropical environment. And he was half dead even at the nursery,” Donghyuck explains. “I’m still surprised he got through the winter so well.”

“Yeah, he looks really good.”

The twitch in Donghyuck’s lips is proud as he reaches for the other one, just a big leaf that’s been sitting in a vase of water for the past few months. Mark’s not quite sure why it hasn’t shriveled up and died yet. 

When Donghyuck pulls it out of the vase, there are two bright white roots snaking from the rotting base of the stalk. Donghyuck plants this one in the smaller pot, but the leaf is so tall that it falls over without the tall glass supporting it.

“We’ll have to prop him up against something,” Donghyuck resolves, but he looks a bit upset.

“Is it just a leaf?”

“No, hopefully it’ll become a new plant.” The curve in Donghyuck’s mouth shows that he’s not really sure either. “It’s from that really big plant that Renjun has, the one that I’ve always wanted, remember?”

Mark does, and he remembers the hour that Donghyuck and Renjun spent arguing about which leaves Donghyuck was allowed to take and which ones he wasn’t. 

“So you can just stick leaves in water and make a new plant?” Mark wonders, because he can’t immediately think of a good reason for that.

“Sometimes. Other plants are different, you have to research it first,” Donghyuck tells him. “I was afraid this wouldn’t work because I didn’t cut it off at the right place, but I’m glad it did. Renjun would’ve killed me if it died.”

“But like, how does a leaf just make roots? Don’t you need a seed, or something?”

Donghyuck gets to his feet, rolls his neck and stretches his shoulders. “Does it matter? John was thirsty, so he gave himself what he needed to drink. Plants are cool like that.”

Mark looks down at the crimson ringed leaves that he’s holding. He wonders if the red catches the sun better, or why all plants don’t have red leaves with little bumps on the edges. 

“You never talked about sunshine,” Donghyuck says as they carry their freshly potted plants back downstairs. 

“What?”

“We were talking about weird things, and you explained all of them except sunshine.”

Mark glances through their living room window to check if the leaves stopped falling during the minutes they spent in the stairwell. A few drift past, more scattered than they had been in the morning but still fluttering about.

“Well, the sun’s just really hot and bright and the earth is sort of near it, relatively, so we get sunshine. It doesn’t really fall, it’s just sort of, always there, isn’t it? Except when it’s cloudy, I guess.”

“But if you went into space, between the earth and the sun, would you still feel the sunshine?” Donghyuck puts John in the window sill, propping up the broad green leaf against the frame.

“I don’t know, probably.”

But it’s weird, because space is supposedly cold, and it's littered with stars like the leaves in the streets. It’s dark, too. 

“Do you only see light when it hits something?” Mark asks Donghyuck, thinking of the rays that he used to draw on the sun with bright yellow crayon that barely showed until he colored in the blue sky around it.

“You say that like seeing something is the same as it existing,” Donghyuck drawls. He bumps Mark’s shoulder when he goes to wash his hands, and the words stick in Mark’s head all night.

Mark wakes up first, which is a bit unusual, because Donghyuck likes to rise early and take in as much of the day as he can. Donghyuck is sleeping on his side, and the thick morning light spills over his features. The leaves are still falling, a bit more faintly now. They’re almost the color of Donghyuck’s eyes, and Mark’s not so scared of them anymore.

Maybe he and Donghyuck can go outside and grind them all into the earth like Donghyuck had ground them into his potting soil, and see how well the plants grow. The leaves are a gift, he supposes. 

But Mark is more human than Donghyuck, and so he’s plagued with the need for a reason as he slides out of bed. He looks in the bathroom mirror and sees traces of brown autumn leaves in his own eyes, as if he had grown from soil fertilized with falling fragments. 

He puts on a pot of coffee, and remembers the woman who said that the heavens were wilting. And he wonders: how do you heal a wasteland that you have yet to set foot in? How do you fix the mistakes that lie in front of you, right the wrongs that you haven’t committed yet?

If heaven is bleeding onto the earth, and it’s divine blood makes earth all more beautiful, does life become the afterlife, or does heaven become hell?

The coffee is black, hot and steaming and making the loveliest sound as it splashes into a mug. There’s something so elegant in the spout of a carafe, in the neck of a teapot, in the handle of a mug. They curve like they were formed around the liquid they’re built to hold. Mark wonders if all things are made for other things, even if they don’t know it yet.

He hears the toilet flush, so he gets out Donghyuck’s favorite mug and pours him a cup. It’s homemade, a little bit lopsided and much wider than their other mugs, and there’s rich green glaze falling down the sides like waterfalls.

They sit at their little wooden table together, drinking black coffee and simmering in the special silence of mornings. Donghyuck breathes in the steam like it’s magic, and he makes it look like it is.

“What were people saying yesterday? At work, about the leaves?” Donghyuck asks when he’s drunk about half of his cup and Mark’s almost done with his own.

Mark smirks. “Thought you didn’t like reasons and all that.”

Donghyuck tries to look affronted but there’s a smile on his lips. “I don’t. I’m just curious about what people are making of it.”

Mark watches him slurp his coffee, eyes on Mark over the rim of the mug and an eyebrow quirked.

“You’re right, it was mostly just nonsense,” Mark says, remembering shivering voices and wide, shaking eyes. “But one lady said that it was the heavens wilting and raining down on the earth. I thought that was kinda cool.”

Donghyuck sets his mug on the table, brow furrowed and eyes unfocused in a way that Mark knows to mean he’s wondering. Wondering at the words and wandering about in his head for an answer.

“So it’s like the next world is falling apart, instead of this one,” he muses after a moment. “But isn’t heaven just a sort of device, an idea that we use to make life beautiful?”

Mark frowns. “I mean, some people look for like, heaven on earth and all that, but I think it’s more about making death beautiful than life.”

Donghyuck tilts his head and meets Mark’s eyes. “But people live a certain way so that they can go to heaven, or have good karma, or any of that, don’t they? And it’s really just a way of tricking them into being good people because being good feels good, for you and everyone else.”

Mark nods, because the words feel true at their heart. “I guess so. But it’s also one of our little explanations, isn’t it? Because there’s no way to know what comes after death, so we have to speculate and pretend we know, because we can’t avoid it either, and if we have to go through something it feels a lot better to understand it.”

“Then do we not shape our lives around grief and death?” Donghyuck’s eyes are narrowed, not in an accusing way, but in a way that means he’s not so sure either. “We live to avoid hell, or to deserve heaven, or to come back as something good instead of something bad. Some people live in a certain way because they feel like death is closer, and they want to grab as much life as they can and hoard it like experiences can make time go slower. Like doing something big and important can change a second into a minute.”

Donghyuck laughs at that, because he’s a boy of the earth and he knows better than anyone that time bows to nothing. Mark thinks about it all for a beat longer, fingers tapping the sides of his mug.

“Yeah, but five minutes skydiving definitely feels like a lot more than five minutes sitting in an office,” Mark says finally. “Even if you can’t stretch out time you can make your memories bigger, can’t you? With emotions, I guess.”

“You’re right, I suppose.” Donghyuck leans back in his chair, and his feet slide out under the table and prod at Mark’s ankles. “But we’re always feeling emotions, aren’t we? Even the boredom at work, that’s a feeling.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a good feeling. Not like happiness and adrenaline and awe.”

“What about sadness?” Donghyuck’s answer is immediate. “Why does grief feel so long, and disappointment and regret and fear and nervousness and all that?”

Mark doesn’t have a response, and he says so, and Donghyuck doesn’t have one either.

So they don’t say anything. Mark gathers up their mugs and starts cleaning the dishes that have piled in the sink. Donghyuck hoists himself up on the countertop next to Mark and watches him work. He has to lean forward so that his head doesn’t knock into the shelves, and he swings his feet to knock on the cabinets.

“What if I want to remember moments like this, though?” Donghyuck asks, fingers curled into the edge of the counter between his legs and eyes on Mark’s hands in the sink. “A simple Friday morning with Mark Lee’s weak coffee and leaves falling from the sky. And how your hands are all soapy and how the dishes sort of clatter in the sink and you’ve got your sleeves rolled up part way and the cabinets feel a bit soft when I hit them with my heels. Is all that enough to make a memory?”

And Mark has to pause, has to shut off the tap and shift sideways to kiss him because he really, really hopes so. Because Donghyuck reminds him of the beauty in every little moment and he’d give anything to remember them all forever, until he’s nothing more than crushed autumn leaves in potting soil.

“They’re your memories, so I think that’s up to you,” Mark says against Donghyuck’s lips when they part. He’s holding up his hands and there’s hot foamy water dripping into his shirtsleeves, and he balances himself by leaning into the counter between Donghyuck’s legs. “And I thought you said my coffee was getting better.”

Donghyuck grins at him with cherry swollen lips and nudges Mark’s nose with his own. “It is, I just like mine extra strong.”

The words are pretty as a dewdrop, Donghyuck’s smile as bright as a daisy.

“I put in a whole extra scoop today, I thought it _was_ extra strong.”

Donghyuck laughs with the gentlest breath and shakes his head. He’s so close that Mark can barely follow the motion, just a blur of sunny skin and lashes black as coffee grounds. When Donghyuck stills, Mark frowns where he can see it, because he just wants to make Donghyuck’s coffee right.

Donghyuck rolls his eyes and pecks Mark’s nose. “It’s okay, though. It reminds me that you made it for me.”

Mark huffs. Donghyuck’s dry hands creep up his neck and pull him in again, hard enough that Mark has to grab the cabinets behind Donghyuck’s head to steady himself. But his fingers are covered in dish soap and hot water and they slip right off the wood and he’s crashing into Donghyuck and Donghyuck’s head is hitting the cabinet and then they’re laughing, laughing like soap bubbles and popcorn and splashing in puddles.

And it’s such a strong laughter that Mark thinks he’ll have to remember it, and all the little things it contains. He kisses Donghyuck again, drags slick hands up his neck because that seems like something memorable. They steal the laughter out from each other’s lungs, let it blaze into something richer that sticks between them like saltwater taffy and throbs around them like tireless ocean waves.

Even when they’re breathless, they stay like that, Donghyuck hunched over so that their foreheads press together. Mark keeps his eyes shut so that he can take it all in like Donghyuck does: the tickle of Donghyuck’s bangs, the sticky residue on Mark’s now dry hands, the drip of the sink and the rasp of Donghyuck’s breath, the hard tiles under the soles of Mark’s feet and the traces of a heartbeat under the thumb he’s got hooked under Donghyuck’s jaw.

Donghyuck’s hands move from where they’d been draped over Mark’s shoulders, clasped behind his back, to find Mark’s other hand, the one leaning on the counter. Mark eases his weight off of it, has to lean back a bit to balance on his feet again, and when he opens his eyes Donghyuck is entranced with his own fingers tracing the lines in Mark’s palm, soothing the white patch on the meaty part from leaning on it for too long.

“We should go somewhere,” Donghyuck murmurs. His voice is silver soft as it sweeps through the memory that Mark is engraving into his mind, a polish over the mismatched details and fragmented moments. 

The words themselves hit Mark a beat later, and he sighs. “I have work in an hour.”

Donghyuck scoffs and collapses into Mark’s chest. “Call in sick.”

“Come on, it’s Friday, let’s just wait for the weekend,” Mark says with a laugh. He can feel Donghyuck’s pout against his neck.

“But I wanna go today, and see the leaves falling somewhere outside the city,” Donghyuck whines. “What if they stop falling before we even get a chance to really watch them?”

It’s odd, because Mark has already grown sort of used to the falling leaves, and Donghyuck seemed to be used to them before they even started falling, but Donghyuck is the one who wants to watch them.

“Don’t you want to see how they look in the forest, or out in the open somewhere? Or at night, somewhere far enough out that we can actually see the stars?” Donghyuck perches his head on Mark’s shoulder as he talks, chin digging into the muscle with every word. “What if it’s not heaven falling, or anything important like that? What if it’s just falling leaves, and we don’t even take the time to appreciate them before they disappear?”

All of it sounds like a dream, but Mark knows that Donghyuck is just looking out the window behind him. He mentally goes over what he’ll tell his boss, what they’ll need to bring with them, if there’s anything he needs to do before they go.

“We always go out during big storms, or to watch a sunrise, or-”

“Okay, okay,” Mark tells him through a laugh. “I’ve just gotta make the call. How long are you thinking?”

Donghyuck beams. “Depends on how long the leaves fall. Unless they never stop, I suppose.”

“How am I supposed to tell them that?”

“Well, you could just quit.”

“Oh, yeah, we could just sell the apartment while we’re at it, the car too,” Mark responds. He helps Donghyuck hop down from the counter, not missing the way that Donghyuck’s face brightens.

“We really could, though,” Donghyuck says as Mark goes to find his phone. “But I like this one, and so do the plants. And you can’t sell Diana, we’ve been through too much together.”

Mark doesn’t have any plans to quit his job, especially if they give him time off, but he lets Donghyuck go on about everything they have, because his words are rushed and airy and they tumble over Mark like a spell. It’s almost jarring, how Mark has settled into perfection deeply enough that it wears a different title. Maybe perfection is as fleeting as life itself, or maybe it’s like Donghyuck’s heaven, a mortal word to help people live out the lives they’ve been gifted. 

There was a time when Mark strived for perfection, took the word and made it a goal, imagined a single version of himself that fit in its outlines and put it on a pedestal. But he kept changing it, and he decided instead that perfection was impossible. And then he met Donghyuck, who finds perfection in the curve of a tree trunk and the splatter of a raindrop. Who somehow finds perfection in Mark’s weak coffee and the red skin around Mark’s cuticles. 

Donghyuck points it out when they fit everything they need into a single duffel bag, when they get in the car to find over a half tank of gas, when he finds a penny heads up on the floor mat between his feet. It’s funny though, because Donghyuck also says it’s perfect when he finds a penny tails up on the ground so that he can flip it over and leave good luck for someone else.

“Perfect,” he says again when they turn on the main drag. There aren’t many cars on the road so they don’t have to wait long, and Mark doesn’t hit the curb when he makes the turn out of their lot like he sometimes does.

There’s a map wedged between the seat and the passenger door, but Donghyuck says it’s for when they have to find their way back, so Mark just heads for the interstate that will get them out of the city. The roads are quiet, which is odd because it’s eleven o’clock on a Friday morning, and the sky and the earth are stuck in different seasons. 

Donghyuck makes him roll all of the windows down and cranks open the sunroof even though it always takes forever to close again. When they hit red lights they count to three and try to blow them out like candles, and one of them changes green right when they do so Mark sticks a hand out the window and calls it perfect.

Every so often some leaves will drift in through the sunroof. Donghyuck takes the ones he can reach and releases them to the breeze outside his window, but the rest pile in the rearview mirror. They rattle and shiver, pressed into the rear windshield like they want to taste the air on the other side.

When Mark isn’t driving fast enough to blow the leaves off the front windshield, he turns the wipers on. Most of the leaves are brushed away, but a few catch in the blades and sweep back and forth, crumpling and scraping in huge arcs across the glass. Donghyuck giggles at that, waves good-bye when they finally flutter away. He puts his hands up and whoops on the on ramp, because Mark takes the turn a bit too fast and they’re both rocked sideways like they’re on a rollercoaster, and Mark screams with him because it makes it all feel like a thrill. 

They stick on the highway for a while, not saying much because their voices flicker out in the roar of the wind. Mark’s bangs blow into his eyes, and he has to roll his window up when he gets tired of squinting and trying to push them to the side. It squeaks, stutters a little bit halfway up, but Mark barely notices it against the brilliance of Donghyuck’s laughter and ringing of Mark’s own smile. Donghyuck puts his window half way up, enough that they can talk normally while still being vulnerable to the open air.

They get off at a random exit because Donghyuck thought the name of the town was funny, and end up on a road that snakes through small towns and quiet forests, studded with little one lane bridges and railroad crossings and bits of narrow blacktop without any lines painted on. Not as many leaves make it to the ground out here, and Mark wonders out loud if they’re all stuck on top of the trees.

“That would be cool, wouldn’t it? Like the ground moved from down here to the top of the forest,” Donghyuck says. “It’s strange because the forest floor makes most sense for the leaves to fall on. They’re supposed to fall here, and now they can’t.”

Mark frowns. “But it’s a forest, so it has its own leaves. Will they all fall together when winter comes again?”

Donghyuck looks out his window, and the air folds his bangs off his forehead so Mark can see the crease in it. “Probably. It’s just odd, right now, seeing the wrong leaves on the branches.”

Mark’s going slow enough that he can take in the details, and Donghyuck is right. There are dead leaves of all shapes and sizes nestled in the budding spring branches, misshapen and discolored against the consistency of the emerald foliage. 

“Not odd, I suppose,” Donghyuck amends. “Just, different. Peculiar. Special, I guess.”

“Funny how those all sort of mean the same thing,” Mark says as he ponders the words, mulls over why ‘special’ does fit best. “You could also call it memorable.”

The word inspires a startled laugh from Donghyuck, and Mark loves meeting his eyes and knowing that they’re both in the kitchen contemplating the constitution of a memory.

“If this doesn’t stick, I don’t know that anything will.”

Eventually the scenery opens up, and the leaves fall on open fields instead of dense forests, catch in slender grass fingers instead of sturdy tree limbs. Mark has no concept of where they are now, and Donghyuck can’t navigate streets and cities in the first place, so they drive at the horizon like they’re looking for the end of the rainbow, letting the world unfurl around them and the sun sink low ahead of them. 

Mark’s hands grow loose and relaxed around the wheel. Donghyuck has rearranged himself so that his bare feet are propped up on the dashboard and he leans on the center console, just close enough to Mark’s shoulder to feel him. They talk about a little bit of everything, drooping plants and the distance from life to death, the weight of sunshine and the durability of a memory, the way the moon is just a mirror and how Donghyuck makes coffee so strong that it tickles your throat and leaves flecks of the grounds in the bottom of the mug.

They make several stops, because they’re not really going anywhere so much as they’re going. There’s a little pond, smooth as crystal and only barely visible from the road. Donghyuck spots it, of course, and they spend a good twenty minutes turning down roads that might get closer only to turn around and get back on the main drag. Mark eventually just pulls over and they stumble through the woods, feet sloshing in autumn leaves because the trees aren’t so dense out here.

It’s worth it, though, because they spot a line of turtles sunning themselves, shiny black buttons sewn into the soggy bark of a fallen tree trunk. The water is murky and sometimes bubbles break the surface so they trudge along the shoreline looking for frogs, but they don’t find anything other than a muddy plastic bag and a weird stick that curves like a scythe. Donghyuck sticks it upright in the mud, and they wade back to the car.

Even when they’re on the road, Mark points out flocks of birds streaking over them, a cloud shaped like a whale. He likes that he can make Donghyuck smile at little beauties like Donghyuck has always done for him, from the heat of his palm to the rainbow band-aids that he buys for when Mark pulls at a hangnail wrong and draws blood. The band-aids are extra small, because they’re technically meant for toddlers, but the rainbows, or kittens, or firetrucks always make Mark smile and they fit the tips of his fingers better than the adult ones.

Mark takes extra care to keep his mind in the present, to suck in the entirety of these moments and immortalize them. 

“Life is really just memories, isn’t it,” Mark says, voice riding the same air that brushes through Donghyuck’s toes. “Because, all of our ideas are based on memories of what we’ve seen or heard or done, and our ideas are what make us perceive everything in a certain way, in our own way, and life is kind of just perceiving.”

Donghyuck is silent, head leaning into the rim of his open window, eyes squinted into the breeze. 

“Like, everyone wants to live long, and be successful and healthy and everything to get more moments, more good moments, and we consume moments through perception, and know to want them because we remember other ones.” Mark frowns and shakes his head because he’s kind of lost track of what he’s saying. “I don’t know.”

He looks at the road ahead of him and contemplates the myths of quests for immortality, alchemists seeking to turn lead into gold, letting the ashes of the dead float on the wind to free the spirit or preserving the body so that it always has a home.

“What if the leaves are memories?” Donghyuck says eventually. 

Mark taps a hand on the steering wheel. “Woah, you did say something like that, when you were repotting the plants, right? You said they had stories.”

“Ah, I guess I did.” Donghyuck laughs. “I didn’t really mean it like that, though.”

“Oh.” Mark shrugs. “It’s kind of the same, though, right?”

“No, but, before I was thinking about what the leaves could do for the earth,” Donghyuck explains, voice straining a bit when he pulls himself to sit cross-legged in their tiny car. “But now you’ve got me thinking about reasons and all that, and I wonder if all of the leaves are just falling memories, because if memories are life then they must go _somewhere_.”

Mark thinks it’s a nice idea, because then the earth can remember all that it’s lost. The leaves restore the perfect equilibrium, make it so the earth doesn’t actually lose anything, even if it returns in different forms.

The gas light pings, because their car is ancient, and Mark has to flick the headlights on when the sun dips low enough that the crescent of light splatters over the horizon and pulls a shadow out of everything. They find a little gas station at a crossroads, and Mark’s a bit chilly standing next to the pump. Donghyuck makes a quick trip inside to grab snacks and run to the bathroom.

“It’s pretty clean, and they said there’s a cool valley up the road with a little pull off to park in,” Donghyuck reports, a lollipop in the side of his cheek and a paper bag cradled in his elbow. He sets the bag in the backseat and waves at the gas pump. “I’ll watch it, you make a bathroom stop.”

Mark flushes. “No, I’ve got it.”

He doesn’t want to say that he’s kind of afraid to click the pump and let it fill on its own after the autostop messed up that one time a few months back and he got gas all over his sneakers. He also had to go in and alert the cashier that there’d been a spill, because the lady at the pump next to him said it was a hazard and that they’d need to clean it up.

Donghyuck laughs because he spent an hour on the phone with Mark after, and he probably knows why Mark hasn’t been driving as much lately, even though not wanting to get gas is a super dumb reason.

“I will hold the lever and everything, come on, I wanna check out this valley thing.” Donghyuck comes around the back and covers Mark’s hand with his own, pressing down with him so that there’s not a moment for the lever to click. It’s a weird thing to swoon at, but Mark’s heart feels like it’s caving in a little bit.

When Mark comes out from the store, Donghyuck’s in the driver's seat and there’s not a drop of gasoline on the pavement. Donghyuck takes them to the little pull off, and it’s not much more than the swell of the hill with an opening to the sky, but it’s off the road and there’s sort of a view.

Donghyuck parks facing away from the road and tells Mark to stay put as he gets out. The headlights are still on, but they don’t even come close to touching the valley in front of them. It’s just a smudge of treetops, a couple of houses in the distance, and as they all spin into the night the stars spill out above them.

Mark hears Donghyuck fiddling around in the trunk, and he watches him in the mirrors when he folds down the back seats. They keep a few blankets in the back just in case, and when Donghyuck spreads them out Mark realizes that they’ll be sleeping with their feet in the trunk tonight.

“Oh my god,” he tells Donghyuck when he struggles to get the seats down all the way and tells Mark to move his own forward. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Donghyuck grins. “It’ll be fun, we can see out the sunroof.”

But even he must see that it looks a bit cramped because he grabs his paper bag and says they should sit outside for a bit. They climb up on the hood, lean back on the windshield. The moon is coming out now, almost a half moon, and it makes the leaves look like bats when they drift down over its face.

Donghyuck produces a bag of shitty convenience store popcorn, a bottle of sparkling cranberry juice that looks far fancier than it actually is, and some paper cups that have birthday hats all over them.

“Why the birthday cups?” Mark asks, holding out two for Donghyuck to fill.

Donghyuck’s focused on pouring the drinks, on the sizzle of the carbonation and glint of the bottle in the night. “All of the other ones were boring. I thought we could celebrate, like, the second day of leaves falling. And it’s gotta be someone’s birthday, somewhere.”

Mark takes a sip, and it’s kind of gross because it’s so sweet, but it does sort of feel like a celebration. A celebration of life, the beauty of sparkling cranberry juice in paper birthday cups, the majesty of a starry sky, the special warmth of shoulders pressed into each other and palms stuck together in a knot of fingers. 

They bump their cups together, even if they don’t make that satisfying clink, and crunch on popcorn that comes from a plastic bag that crinkles way too loudly in the peace of a hilltop. But the night yawns wide enough to swallow up any sounds, and it’s cozy and private on the hood of a car parked just a ways off from the road. Mark keeps his voice low, permeating only the space between him and Donghyuck, and Donghyuck whispers his own words right back into Mark’s cheek.

They lean closer and closer, chasing each other’s heat as the night cools, and the energy that blossoms between them is as quiet and powerful as the sky above them. What Mark and Donghyuck have together isn’t quite so loud anymore, and Mark relishes in the way that they are something natural now, existing in harmony as assuredly as sunlight on the moon. 

It’s later, when they’re tucked into the backseat, knees bent awkwardly to fit their feet in the trunk and staring through the sunroof, that Mark thinks of the leaves again.

“Do you think they really do come from the afterlife, or whatever?”

Mark expects Donghyuck to laugh, to say something about how it doesn’t really matter where the leaves come from, but he doesn’t. Donghyuck just hums, pillows his head on a folded arm and squints through their dented black skylight.

“They might,” Donghyuck settles on. “But that feels a little too human, doesn’t it?”

“Oh,” Mark says, surprised. It does make sense, that whatever soul or spirit is raining down in the form of autumn leaves would come from more than just people.

“What?” Donghyuck asks, a shade of defensive, shifting to face Mark. There’s a furrow in his brow, and Mark has to laugh at it.

“No, I think you’re right, I was just expecting you to tell me it doesn’t matter.”

Donghyuck sighs. “To me it doesn’t, but you’re clearly stuck on it, so I’ll just make it matter.”

“What?”

Donghyuck ignores him. “There’s something cyclical about it, you know? Because, leaves fall in the winter because they can’t survive the cold, so they won’t be able to do all of their stuff anymore. And then they become part of the ground, and the trees sprout new leaves once the weather warms up. Maybe wherever they’re falling from was just, ready to let go of something, and trust that something new will come.”

Mark turns away from the falling leaves, wiggles onto his side to face Donghyuck, bent knees knocking into each other and scratchy carpeting on Mark’s shoulder. 

“What if there’s something bad coming? For them, I mean,” Mark murmurs. “If the leaves are falling because they won’t be able to survive whatever’s coming?”

“Well, that doesn’t seem like our problem, does it?” Donghyuck declares. “We’ve figured out how to survive the seasons, surely everything else can.”

Mark laughs at the assertiveness in his voice. “What if I say it matters to me?”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes but he’s smiling. “Then I’d ask you why it matters to you, and what good it will do to think about it.”

“Wait, but what does that even mean?” The words wobble over Mark’s chuckle. Donghyuck joins in, ribs shaking from the awkward curves of their spines. It’s what they always do, when their words take them far enough that one of them gets lost.

“When something matters to you, it’s important, right?” Donghyuck proposes.

It simultaneously feels like he’s speaking the obvious and summoning ideas too big for Mark’s head. Mark responds in words he doesn’t even really understand, grasping at the feathered edges of a thought without even seeing its wings.

“Then nothing ever actually matters then, because if we can make things matter then we can also make things… un-matter.” Mark shakes his head, because what does that even mean? “I don’t know. Is there even a reason that we should make things matter?”

Donghyuck considers that one for a bit, his eyes stuck somewhere just beside Mark, his fingers fiddling with a little plastic lever in the back of the seat. “Don’t we live to make things matter?”

And for some reason Mark thinks of scientific matter, of a reality constructed with solids, liquids and gases, and maybe plasma, whatever that is. He wonders if something becomes real when it matters, real in the sense of elements and atoms, chemicals and electrical charges that knit memories and emotions. If something becomes physical when given enough thought to carry love or hate, joy or sadness, excitement and regret. 

Living is awfully physical. It’s just the time that whatever living things are made up of spend in a concrete body. Does ‘mattering’ mean existing, materially, or does it need something more? Is life really just corporeal existence, or does it need something more? Are Mark and Donghyuck, Martin and William and the Johns and all of their other plants, all of the leaves falling from the sky and all of the leaves sprouting through tree bark—are all of them just a mess of atoms or something more?

Is the reason the leaves fall something that should matter? 

Mark thinks that the leaves and the wind and the ground and the sky are mortal, but reasons drift through lives like ghosts.

“I think we have to make things matter, and we do it naturally, because otherwise it would all be a waste,” Mark says finally. 

Donghyuck hums. His eyes are on Mark’s now, heavy and human amongst the gauzy whirlwind of abstractions. “We waste a lot of things, don’t we.”

Mark thinks of recycling old notebooks, how he heard that you have to rip the paper out of the spines because that part can’t be recycled, and if there’s a spine on the notebook, or a bottle cap on your bottle, or plastic in your envelopes then none of it will get recycled at all. He thinks of the used grocery bags stuffed into their pantry and the used grocery bags in the ocean. He thinks of how he’s always sort of confused about how to dispose of old batteries because he’s pretty sure you can’t just throw them out normally.

There are heaps of garbage buried in the earth and tons of plastic in the oceans, there’s cement being poured over fresh soil everyday, trees knocked down and dams built up and cities smoking like cigarettes. 

“It’s like we’ve been given this planet just to waste it all,” Mark mutters. “Like we get a life just to waste it.”

Mark hates to think about how disgusted he is by it all, because he tries his best to do good things but he’s just one person, and every grocery bag that he reuses and soda can he picks up off the sidewalk is replaced by someone else doing the opposite.

“But then wasting is sort of like mattering.” Donghyuck slides his hand out from under his head and rests it against Mark’s hair. “We can look at something as a waste, or we can get something out of it. Yeah, going to work sometimes feels like a waste of time, but I get to interact with people that I’d never get to see otherwise, and together we make enough to support ourselves, and I have stable hours that mean I get to come home to you or take a week off to watch some leaves fall.”

“That’s true, I guess,” Mark says, but he thinks it might just be for Donghyuck. Mark’s never known anyone who can weave excitement into such a dull routine, but maybe this is why. Maybe Donghyuck doesn’t think of his routine as dull, or as a routine at all. Maybe this is why he takes different routes to go to work, tries out every little coffee shop or bakery or farmstand he can find along the way, strikes conversation with almost everyone he encounters. 

Maybe life is just exactly what you make of it, finding things to matter and never calling something a waste. Maybe every day is just a day, studded with little gems of joy that don’t dull just because you’ve seen them every other day. If every day feels the same, Mark wonders if it’s just him not paying enough attention. Because the weather changes, and the seasons change, and the plants grow, or wilt, or decompose, or fall apart completely. Mark grows, and Donghyuck does too, and even if they talk about the same thing twice they never use the same words.

Mark slides his socked feet over Donghyuck’s, and finds the other looking at him expectantly. 

“I was just thinking about how we’re killing the earth, but I like what you said.” Mark reaches up to clasp the hand Donghyuck has over his head, brings it to the half moon of space between their chests and fiddles with Donghyuck’s palm. “You’re really good at making things matter, Donghyuck. And I think that’s what stops it from becoming a waste.”

Donghyuck looks down, but he can’t hide his smile when they’re tucked in so close. “I wouldn’t say that. I just, do things that make me happy.”

“No, I don’t think you get that, like.” Mark can’t even put it into words, because somehow Donghyuck’s happiness tastes like the air and falls on Mark in a way that feels more natural than sunshine. “It’s different, how you do it. Everyone wants to be happy, and they don’t know how, and you just, take what you’ve got and do it. It’s amazing.”

Donghyuck laughs, and it’s high and silvery and a little bit flustered, like summer leaves rustling in a breeze. “Happy is just a word, and for some reason everyone made it into a life goal. I think everyone feels all of the same things, but it’s a choice to call the whole mess of it happiness or not.”

Mark frowns at him.

“Like, having goals is really good, and healthy, and keeps people motivated, but we can’t let some idea of an end stop us from truly living up to it, right?” Donghyuck continues. “But making happiness a goal is sort of counterproductive because we’re built to feel all sorts of things, and if we took a step backwards every time we weren’t overjoyed we’d all be miserable. So I guess I just sort of, hold on to the little bits of happy, and _feel_ all of the other stuff, as much as I can.”

There’s a full feeling in Mark’s chest, something bright and thick and billowing that he doesn’t want to pin a word on. “I think you’ve gotten me to do the same thing.”

Donghyuck grins, teeth white in the moonlight that filters in through the sunroof. “I like making you happy, or whatever we want to call it.”

Mark tugs his blanket up to his ears, which makes his toes stick out but somehow helps with whatever is unfurling behind his collarbones, with the heat in his face and the rush in his heartbeat.

“You do the same for me, you know,” Donghyuck adds.

Mark curls into him, tucking his knees between Donghyuck’s legs so that his toes and his shoulders fit under the blanket. His nose ends up in Donghyuck’s shoulder, and Donghyuck settles against him and presses a kiss to his cheek. Mark feels him smile into his hair, because Mark’s heartbeat thuds into the skin of Donghyuck’s chest and Donghyuck knows how to read the message in it.

By the time they make it back to the city, the leaves have stopped falling. They pile in the sidewalks like the snow banks did in the winter, and pool on roofs and lamp posts and budding trees, peaceful autumn shadows in spring sunlight.

After waking up with itchy skin and aching joints, Mark and Donghyuck had decided to find their way home, because spending the night in the trunk of a car is only fun once you’ve forgotten how bad it is. They took a different way home, to glimpse some new scenery and because they couldn’t really figure out where they were on the map until they’d hit a village that was half an hour in the wrong direction.

When they roll into their parking spot, it feels like they’ve been gone for weeks. There are people outside, sweeping up leaves and milling around now that the sky is clear. Mark and Donghyuck bring their duffel bag and leftover birthday cups up to their apartment, where Donghyuck opens every window they have and checks on all of his houseplants.

“Did everyone make it?” Mark asks.

Donghyuck rolls his eyes as he fills up his watering can at the sink. “We were gone for barely two days, of course they made it.”

“I don’t know, maybe William didn’t like his new pot, or something.” Mark flops down on the couch and watches Donghyuck flit from plant to plant. “I think he’ll like the leaves, though.”

Donghyuck studies how fast the soil soaks up the water, waits for it to drain out of the pots that have little holes in the bottom. He brushes down some of the leaves, prods at the soil.

“Definitely,” Donghyuck agrees. “He’s perked up a little already. John is still having a hard time, though.”

Donghyuck rinses off his hands and lays out on the couch, draping his knees over Mark’s thighs. 

“Well, he was just a leaf, and now he’s got to figure out how to be a whole plant,” Mark says. “I’d be having a hard time too.”

Donghyuck laughs, and it sounds a bit weird when he’s lying on his back with his head tipped back over the armrest. “True. But he’s got all he needs, and I imagine that growing is the fun part.”

Mark smiles and rubs his hands along Donghyuck’s calves. It feels good to sit down after driving all day, especially with the crick in his neck and the ache in his spine after sleeping in the backseat. 

“Growing is always the fun part, isn’t it,” Mark says. “Maybe we’re all sort of just, plants. Always growing, more roots to get to the water and more leaves to collect the sunlight.”

Donghyuck hums in agreement. “I like that idea.”

They sit like that for a while, bathed in fresh spring air and the serenity of an afternoon breeze. Mark loses himself to the unblemished spring sky out the window, at the clouds drifting by and the leaf sodden rooftops.

Mark finds perfection spelled in the weight of Donghyuck’s legs, in the sound of skittering autumn leaves, in the soreness along his back and the earthy scent of freshly watered soil. 

“It’s pretty cool that our plants have magical leaves in them now,” Mark says. He rolls up the ends of Donghyuck’s pant legs so that he can properly massage his skin. “I’m glad we went out to watch them.”

“I don’t know about magic, but, me too.” 

A cupful of air spills through the window, sliding through Donghyuck’s hair and trickling over the leaves hanging next to the crown of his head. He closes his eyes.

Mark brings a hand down to Donghyuck’s ankle, working the tips of his fingers into the muscle and easing his touch into the bottom of Donghyuck’s foot. “Don’t they say that magic is just a label for what we don’t understand? And you said evaporation was magic.”

Donghyuck sighs as Mark presses into his arches, palm firm on the ball of his foot and thumbs digging into the center. Donghyuck’s always loved foot rubs, even if Mark was the one driving and Donghyuck had his feet propped on the dash the whole time.

His legs jerk suddenly when he laughs, and Mark stops his massage to look at him. Donghyuck lifts up his head, bits of laughter still jumping in his chest, eyes bright.

“So anything can be magic, if we think about it in the right way, just like anything can be a waste or a memory, or happiness,” Donghyuck tells him, the words soft from the curl of his smile. “Making reality into a fantasy sounds more exciting than having a reason for everything to me.”

Mark lets his head drop back on the couch. “I’m not saying we need a reason for _everything_ , I was just- It’s about being curious, rather than wanting to know all of it, right? You know what I mean.”

“Nope.” Donghyuck pops the p, lifts his legs from Mark’s lap to fold them underneath him and sit upright, facing Mark head on. “I’m talking about how people get so caught up in wondering why something is the way it is that they forget to look at what it even is in the first place.”

Mark sits up on the couch too, turns to face Donghyuck and accidentally gets a foot stuck in between the cushions. “Yeah, but sometimes to know what something really is you have to know where it comes from.”

“You just said that magic is basically everything that we don’t understand, how’s that supposed to work?”

“That’s different, magic is, like, abstract.” Mark frowns. “And magic isn’t actually real, it’s just, a placeholder until we figure something else out.”

Donghyuck scoffs. “That’s boring. Everyone likes magic, why would we put so much energy into eliminating it? Why don’t we just understand exactly what we need to, and let everything else be? Then we can have magical starlight every day, and fantastical sky water and leaves that change color and other leaves that don’t, and plants that make their own roots and their own leaves and even more plants.”

Mark considers humanity, and it’s affinity to ruin things. He thinks of original sin, and the price of opening your eyes and understanding.

“You were the one who said the leaves weren’t magical,” is what he settles on.

Donghyuck exhales brightly. “I did, didn’t I?”

He meets Mark’s eyes. Mark can’t look away, but he can’t quite find a response either, so he just watches the spring wash over Donghyuck, lets it wrap around his own body. 

“Well, I change my mind then,” Donghyuck declares. “The leaves are definitely magical, and our lovely plants are very lucky to have them.”

Mark laughs at that. “I’d have to agree.”

Donghyuck smiles primly, proud. “Good.”

The couch squeaks when Donghyuck leans back, plopping his feet back in Mark’s lap. He digs his toes into Mark’s thighs until Mark resumes his foot rub. Mark watches his eyes drift closed, hears his breaths thicken into a sleepy rhythm. There’s a book on the coffee table that Mark can reach without disturbing Donghyuck, so he reads that for a while.

Eventually the sun sets, and the breeze gains enough of an edge that Donghyuck wakes up from the chill of it. He yawns and rubs at his eyes, as blurred and rich as the golden figures cast through the open windows. 

There’s a blanket draped over the chair next to him, and he grabs it before shuffling around until he’s lying mostly on top of Mark, covering both of them with it. He ends up covering Mark’s hands, and the book he’s holding, but it’s okay because now Mark’s more focused on Donghyuck anyway.

Mark hadn’t realized how cold the air was until he had Donghyuck pressed against him, solid in the sagging couch cushions and warm in the bite of the dusk breeze. His hair tickles Mark’s chin, and his hip bone juts into Mark whenever he inhales, but his hands find Mark’s under the blanket and he holds Mark’s wrist in both hands like it’s all he needs. 

Mark doesn’t try to label the feeling seeping into him, pooling in the crooks of his elbows and the dips in his collarbones, thickening in his stomach and simmering in his cheeks. He lets it swathe his skin and thinks that the earth might enjoy it, someday, whether it falls from the sky in a brittle autumn leaf or climbs up from deep beneath the soil.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for making it to the end!! please take a minute to find some magic in your life and embrace yourself because you definitely deserve it <3


End file.
